How was I supposed to know that you'd become you?

(SPOILERS) Neill Blomkamp scarcely needed anyone else voting
against him self-penning his own movies after the underwhelming Elysium. But, just in case anyone was on
the fence, he has ollowed it up with phenomenally misconceived Chappie, a picture so fascinatingly bad,
so inept on every level (barring effects and action direction, both rendered
with typically deceptive ease) that one is baffled Fox would be willing to hand
him the keys to the Alien franchise.

I mean, let Blomkamp direct an Alien movie by all means but he shouldn’t be let near a typewriter
ever again. This isn’t the first time a multi-hyphenate “auteur” has been unleashed
on the all-conquering xenomorph. The last time was a decade ago when Paul W S
Anderson, the legend in charge of the Resident
Evil series, took it upon himself to match aliens against predators. I can
give Elysium a bit of slack; I mean,
it was clunkingly obvious and crude in its storytelling and logic, but its
heart was in the right place. Pretty much. What Chappie is trying to say is a mystery.

On the one hand it’s the tale of an E.T. like innocent in Robocop
form, a child A.I. brought up as a gangsta rapper by Die Antwoord (white South
African rap-ravers Ninja and Yo-Lande Visser, playing themselves for reasons
unclear – possibly the way Norman Wisdom always plays “Norman” – and
excruciatingly providing soundtrack accompaniment too; one can only guess the
latter came free, or they paid Blomkamp). On the other it’s a glorification of Johannesburg
guns-and-ganster culture; our murderous protagonists are apparently to be
rooted for and, even though Ninja’s a complete prick, he’s still Chappie’s “daddy”
(I may have missed something, but I don’t get why we’re supposed to treat them
like Ocean’s 11-type likeable felons).

The corporate side is absolute nonsense; so much of this
movie teeters on the brink of self-parody, you only wish there was actually a sense of humour involved (at
one point Yo-Landi is in bed with Chappie, Morecambe
and Wise style, but it’s left at that). Deon (Dev Patel, pouring milk on
his cardboard) has come up with the robot cop A.I. programme, much to the
chagrin of Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman, who I’m guessing took the part solely
to sport a ridiculous mullet and short shorts), whose Moose programme (ED209,
basically) is rejected by CEO Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver, in the second
successive case of Blomkamp getting a great actress and furnishing her with a
lousy role).

Nothing about this office environment makes any sense. That
Deon isn’t on the board after creating a smash hit robot police force, that
Vincent is able to get up to no good at every turn (don’t they have an HR
Department?), that Michelle is so hopelessly short-sighted she can’t perceive
of any uses for either Vincent’s metal mammoth or, most nonsensically, Deon’s
revelation that he really has created A.I. (“You’ve pitched me a robot that can write poems” she says, waving
him away). She’s a moron.

Then there’s the strange anti-Robocop ethos running through the set-up, which is contrary to
about 90% of such fare that puts humanity first; Vincent’s design has a human
operator (it’s like a Jaeger!) but he’s the bad
guy. It’s the guy behind the autonomous killing machine who’s right (although
only so much, Deon is a nerdy square, which means he can’t ever be up there
with Chappie’s surrogate mommy and daddy, Die Antwoord). This kind of backward
logic reaches its most absurd extreme during the climax, in which – clearly
forsaking any last vestiges of plausibility – Chappie uploads the dying Deon
into the body of another robot. How does Deon react? He doesn’t bat a metal
eyelid. This, despite the rational approach seen in the Robocop series
(including the remake), that messing with one’s flesh and blood self would have
untold psychological consequences (if you didn’t just plain lose it).

I don’t know, perhaps the He-Man reference is supposed to indicate the level of internal
logic Blomkamp is working by, but even by Masters
of the Universe standards this doesn’t make a lick of sense. Die Antwoord
decide to abduct Deon because he must have a remote control to turn the robots
off? It’s like this has been scripted for the Children’s Film Foundation, just
with added dismemberments. At one point Ninja leaves Chappie in a rough
neighbourhood to fend for himself and learn it’s a hard world. It doesn’t
compute, particularly since Chappie barely makes it back and the robot is
crucial for Ninja to pull off his robbery.

None of this might be so bad if Chappie was an endearing and
loveable creation. He isn’t; he’s plain annoying (as motion captured and voiced
by Sharlto Copley, never backwards in drawing attention to himself), be it
playing the frightened infant or strutting gangsta poses; he’s only palatable during
the opening section when offering more Robocop-esque delivery.

Blomkamp seems (I emphasise seems, as what the hell he’s up
to is probably known only to him for certain) to be saying something about our
freedom or lack thereof to be who we need to be, with the good and bad fathers (Ninja
and Deon, but which is which?) pulling him in every which way to get what they
want (Deon tells Chappie to nurture his creativity, not to kill, and to be
himself, then starts dictating what he has to do). At the end, Yolandi’s consciousness
is ready to be downloaded into a new robot form, a triumph for machines over
flesh, and there isn’t the slightest doubt that she is to be rewarded for…
being a good mother?

Ninja and Yo-Landi are both terrible, as if that needs
saying. The former comes across as a particularly inept Albert Steptoe, just a tattooed
version with designs on being a gangster. The latter, an excitable eight year
old in an adult’s body with a voice to match, is just very odd, and intensely
irritating. God knows what Jackman’s doing in this, although he does get to deliver the one funny line (“Come on, you little gangster!” Vincent
gloats as he deals destruction via the Moose bot).

The effects are impressive, of course, and Blomkamp can be
relied upon to deliver a sterling bit of action; there’s a freeway heist, the
Moose on the rampage, and a final sequence where Chappie gets angry, lifted
straight out of Murphy arresting Clarence Boddicker. His design, complete with
ears, reminded me a bit of Green Rabbit from the Marvel Star Wars comics. Well, just the ears really.

Apparently Blomkamp has two sequels in mind, but it’s
probably safe to say (I hope so, anyway) that they’re as likely as his District 9 sequel.I really
hope someone rewrites whatever gubbins he’s come up with for Alien 5 but given Sir Ridley’s rewrite input
on Prometheus was less than
reassuring, he probably thinks its dynamite stuff. Make no mistake, Chappie’s a bad movie, but it’s an
expertly made bad movie, and its sort of hypnotic for how overwhelmingly bad it
is. Meanwhile, if you want to see a half decent recent A.I. movie, you could do
worse than check out Automata.

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